Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.

Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

Special Thanks
Two people really helped a lot with the development of this ruleset and the management of the game:

- ElJeffe, who got my initial drafts of the rules and helped me work out a system that appeared balanced despite some of its oddities; and

- Ardor, who was kind enough to help out with the narrations on the days that I knew for certain that I would not be able to produce them in a timely manner. (The last few days weren't exactly 'timely', either, but I'm hoping that the quicker results held you over.) He also helped me with the final revision of the rules and helped me clean up questions that arose during the game.

Mechanics

I'm glad that you guys liked the mechanics in general--the general concept was to make it so that networks were, if not impossible, small and dependent more on the educated guesses you find in classic Phalla versus some of the games we've had more recently. It's not fun if you don't have a chance to participate, and the goal here was to make both investigation and death as uncertain as possible so that you would have to go on your hunches. The secondary goal was to try to encourage participation by all sides.

To that end, there were a lot less bad guys than people thought--only three on each side, with a thrall for each team--and one good-aligned alien whose win condition was to survive with the humans. The other alien races were merely references and/or implications to other mechanics. Because there were (relatively) few bad guys and (supposedly) many deaths per night, the good guy specials were meant to work as teams. Seers could each do one of the scans available to them, allowing them to either team up on targets as complete seers (by going med1/comm1, -/med2, comm2/med3, ...), quickly hunt specials or, if they alternated, hunt aliens. Guardians had to synchronize their actions or they would fail. If the vigilantes did not send in choices every night, there would be less kills.

Good game and well narrated, but to be perfectly honest my interest level was low because I didn't like the rules of this phalla. The complete lack of any solid information in any form really kills any potential strategy and reduces everybody to voting on suspicions. We didn't know what roles were in the game or how they work, and the seers have no concrete information so no networking. I felt like I was just coming in every night, putting on a blindfold and tossing a dart at a list of names.

The Leshi was a seer that had the combined power of the other two with some modifications:
- He could check if a player was a thrall (but not if they were special) every day;
- He could get all information about a player on a two-day seering.
- Also, if he were not initiating another action that day, he could do either a one-time vigilante or a one-time guardianship. Both were 'true'.

The drawback, of course, was that he seered alien.

His win mechanic was to survive to the end of the game for a human victory.

The Argosy and Thompsonites had a coin-flip at the beginning of the game, then alternated kills. One side would get two kills per night, and the other one. Then, they would alternate until aliens started to die, at which point the side with more remaining aliens got the second of the three kills. When the Argosy were eliminated, the Thompsonites got a third kill (until their inactive member was killed for inactivity, at which point I instituted a penalty of one kill per night).

This game was such a blast you guys, I only wish I could've done better as a Guardian.

I had Squashua to help me out during the first few days, but then he was gone because of all the suspicion. I believe we started guarding precisionk the first night, then life3. We then stopped an attack on Gnasty the following night. The next day completely threw me. Last I had heard, Squashua had been networking with Gnasty, my Guild leader. So it was a big shock with Gnasty's literal last minute turn on my partner, where he also changed our Guild vote. That was right when titmouse openly declared himself in the thread, so we were going to try and protect him until he was verified. The addition of the Guild powers meant I had to modify that plan a bit because our Guild chose to Guard titmouse hoping that one of the others would scan him. (Again, Gnasty throws me here.) After that, I was just looking for somebody to trust and I kept guarding titmouse hoping for something. However, no attack came and nobody contacted me up until my bonehead play and death a few days ago. Oh well, live and learn.

This game was such a blast you guys, I only wish I could've done better as a Guardian.

I had Squashua to help me out during the first few days, but then he was gone because of all the suspicion. I believe we started guarding precisionk the first night, then life3. We then stopped an attack on Gnasty the following night. The next day completely threw me. Last I had heard, Squashua had been networking with Gnasty, my Guild leader. So it was a big shock with Gnasty's literal last minute turn on my partner, where he also changed our Guild vote. That was right when titmouse openly declared himself in the thread, so we were going to try and protect him until he was verified. The addition of the Guild powers meant I had to modify that plan a bit because our Guild chose to Guard titmouse hoping that one of the others would scan him. (Again, Gnasty throws me here.) After that, I was just looking for somebody to trust and I kept guarding titmouse hoping for something. However, no attack came and nobody contacted me up until my bonehead play and death a few days ago. Oh well, live and learn.

I have no idea how, but I strongly suspected that you were a guardian. That's why I never bothered attacking titmouse until you were gone.

Good game and well narrated, but to be perfectly honest my interest level was low because I didn't like the rules of this phalla. The complete lack of any solid information in any form really kills any potential strategy and reduces everybody to voting on suspicions. We didn't know what roles were in the game or how they work, and the seers have no concrete information so no networking. I felt like I was just coming in every night, putting on a blindfold and tossing a dart at a list of names.

That's interesting, because it seems that the other players were able to make reasonable hunches based on the kills that did occur. The Argosy were killed in three straight nights based, in part, on the association between Frosteey and MrBallBaggins. In some games, guesses are all you get. I'm sorry if you didn't find it enjoyable.

The Argosy got fucked, hard, but on reflection we pretty much deserved it. I think Gnasty and I erred seriously when we took control of our respective guilds; we were basically begging to be vigilanted. And when MrBallBaggins had his slip up, we really ought to have changed the kill off Plutonium, but we didn't.

Hee hee. For those of you not in the know, I was evil in two Phallas simultaneously, and in each game I had a partner who was not on my team in the other (Gnasty here, Buzz Buzz in the ODaM game). I was worried about slipping up, so I decided to kill Buzz Buzz in this game and Gnasty in the other to eliminate the possibility.

Good game and well narrated, but to be perfectly honest my interest level was low because I didn't like the rules of this phalla. The complete lack of any solid information in any form really kills any potential strategy and reduces everybody to voting on suspicions. We didn't know what roles were in the game or how they work, and the seers have no concrete information so no networking. I felt like I was just coming in every night, putting on a blindfold and tossing a dart at a list of names.

That's interesting, because it seems that the other players were able to make reasonable hunches based on the kills that did occur. The Argosy were killed in three straight nights based, in part, on the association between Frosteey and MrBallBaggins. In some games, guesses are all you get. I'm sorry if you didn't find it enjoyable.

Moving on to the Guilds and the story itself...

Don't worry about that criticism, tux. The change in mechanics was a breath of fresh air, and allowed for more thinking and planning to those who wanted to get involved.

I have no idea how, but I strongly suspected that you were a guardian. That's why I never bothered attacking titmouse until you were gone.

Hah, that's what was driving me so crazy! Not one attack, not even a probe to see if he was being guarded.

I'll admit, when you came in and voted for titmouse at the last minute, it threw me for a bit of a loop until the narration confirmed my suspicions. What the hell was up with that vote, anyway? You were protecting him!

The Guilds were a last-minute addition to the final ruleset. I put it into the mechanics post draft as a tentative thing, not knowing exactly what I was going to do with them except that they would get a single vote and that they would act as seed groups for discussion, if not necessarily networking. After the first couple of days, where the vigilantes were either unlucky in their kills or simply not sending in orders, I decided that the guilds that were still active would get one-time powers to compensate for the poor showing the players had had up to that point. To that end, the powers worked out very well and gave the players a chance to get some confirmed humans (not knowing if they were special) to seed small networks.

The fact that the players got so into the guild bloc voting was both a blessing and a curse. When you guys continued to be dependent on it after day 3, I started getting concerned that you would be giving your own guildmates a free pass that they hadn't actually earned. That sorted itself out, at least.

The fact that the players got so into the guild bloc voting was both a blessing and a curse. When you guys continued to be dependent on it after day 3, I started getting concerned that you would be giving your own guildmates a free pass that they hadn't actually earned. That sorted itself out, at least.

Yeah, thanks for sorting it out AFTER I died, guys.

I'd say it's more of a curse because it basically killed off the pk consortium, because there was "no reason" to not go after the weaker guild under the guild bloc mentality. :|

It took too long to shake off that mentality, but it was a nice recovery afterwards.

ThreeLemmings asked me if I had planned out the backstory out or whether I was making it up as I went along. A little of both, honestly. I had the basics written down--a timeline, what each type of alien's motivation was, what the players and the 'narrator' would be doing. Then, when I got to the point where I did the signup, this big blob of text popped out and I thought, 'well crap. This doesn't bode well.' By the first day, I had two different stories mapped out, no time to do either, and an acute realization that the OP really couldn't be more than two posts or everyone's eyes would glaze over.

The things with Ardor, Pericles, and the Pleaides were developed during the first couple of days, and filled out 'on the fly' as the various days went on. I can definitely say that the end of the story was completely ginned up as the game went along. I knew what the aliens' goals were, but not how they would get there. That tied in with the development of the Agent; see 'Things That Went Wrong', in the next (and last) explanation post...

The big weakness, which I thought Ardor filled in pretty well, was my lack of focus on the actual deaths of characters. I tried to remedy that closer to the end, but at the beginning I was very much not focusing on the deaths of actual players because I still wasn't sure how to make that happen. (The Agent actually also helped on that front.)

I have no idea how, but I strongly suspected that you were a guardian. That's why I never bothered attacking titmouse until you were gone.

Hah, that's what was driving me so crazy! Not one attack, not even a probe to see if he was being guarded.

I'll admit, when you came in and voted for titmouse at the last minute, it threw me for a bit of a loop until the narration confirmed my suspicions. What the hell was up with that vote, anyway? You were protecting him!

I was really short on time, but it was basically a stupid, stupid cut-and-paste but forget to change the name error. I had tried once previously, but the request timed out. I forgot to check on the next attempt.

I have no idea how, but I strongly suspected that you were a guardian. That's why I never bothered attacking titmouse until you were gone.

Hah, that's what was driving me so crazy! Not one attack, not even a probe to see if he was being guarded.

I'll admit, when you came in and voted for titmouse at the last minute, it threw me for a bit of a loop until the narration confirmed my suspicions. What the hell was up with that vote, anyway? You were protecting him!

I was really short on time, but it was basically a stupid, stupid cut-and-paste but forget to change the name error. I had tried once previously, but the request timed out. I forgot to check on the next attempt.

Hehe, that's classic. So much of that post made absolutely no sense, and now I see why.

Two major things were goofed during the game. One was due to incomplete communication with Ardor, and I'll take the blame for it now. The other was the (non) actions of the vigilantes, leading to a big deficit of kills on the players' side after the first few days. On one day, neither of the vigilantes sent in any kill order at all, in fact. I was getting a little annoyed. Both were bandaged with the invention of the Agent.

Here's the big goof: Gnasty was wondering why he died. He shouldn't have; he was protected by the guardians and attacked by a guild vigilante action. I didn't make it clear enough to Ardor that the guild vigilante was a 'normal' action that didn't trump guardian actions. When I came back that day and checked Ardor's results, I noticed two special deaths and one alien death (or whatever it was), saw that the results didn't reflect that count, and corrected it before checking the spreadsheet to see if the actions matched up. Oops!

Now, the last Argosy had died by then, so he was basically working from an unwinnable position anyway. But I still felt bad about it, so in order to let him affect the game some I asked him to name five living, active players. He named a human, human, alien, human, human. From that, I made the vigilante agent, who was activated from the wreckage of his ship. Each day, the Agent would pick a random person from the faction chosen that day, and grant them a one-time kill for that day. In order to 'encourage' participation, if they did not pick a target, they would be killed. This helped keep the kill count up, and it helped make the end more interesting as well (because the Thompsonites got their third kill back on the next-to-last day).

Now, the last Argosy had died by then, so he was basically working from an unwinnable position anyway. But I still felt bad about it, so in order to let him affect the game some I asked him to name five living, active players. He named a human, human, alien, human, human. From that, I made the vigilante agent, who was activated from the wreckage of his ship. Each day, the Agent would pick a random person from the faction chosen that day, and grant them a one-time kill for that day. In order to 'encourage' participation, if they did not pick a target, they would be killed. This helped keep the kill count up, and it helped make the end more interesting as well (because the Thompsonites got their third kill back on the next-to-last day).

I was wondering about that. In PMs with Last Son talking about the one-time vigilantes, I ventured a guess that they were chosen from the remaining humans. But then when titmouse, zek, and I died on the same night I realized either that wasn't the case or a human had really fucked up.

Well played bad guys. I should have known to be more suspicious of cheez from the SE phalla, but I thought maybe the aliens just didn't recognize him or see him as a threat.

Great phalla Tux. I really enjoyed the story and I don't think I can ever read a post of Ardor without imagining him standing on the bridge. XD

So, I got fooled by Gnasty, as did the rest of my guild. I was well aware of Gnasty's reputation and I was suspicious of him all along. But Gnasty is very smart and everything he did protected either the members of our guild or was in the interest of the village. So I saw no reason to stop supporting his actions.

When we got our guardian power, I insisted on me sending in the order, there were two reasons for this:
1) It would look stupid if we followed Gnasty blindly and would cast suspicion on me.
2) I did never really trust Gnasty and figured this was the time to gain some power over the rest.

Then Gnasty died and the rest of the guild kinda agreed that I would function as "guildleader" huzzah.

Throughout the game I was in contact with James (people even accused us of being stonecutters at one point. ) and I told him that Gnasty was doing what was best for the village and guild at that point. His guild went ahead and got Gnasty killed anyway, so I was surprised about that.

So I jokingly voted on him, assuming that something better would come up later that day. Surprisingly some sheep decided it would be fun to hop on this bandwagon. I warned James through IM that he was getting bandwagoned before I went to bed. During that night James was successful in turning the bandwagon on me.

Dead, I was and James kept on rocking in a free world.

*fakeedit: I never know if people read these posts of mine, they must be very uninteresting. xD

Great phalla Tux. I really enjoyed the story and I don't think I can ever read a post of Ardor without imagining him standing on the bridge. XD

So, I got fooled by Gnasty, as did the rest of my guild. I was well aware of Gnasty's reputation and I was suspicious of him all along. But Gnasty is very smart and everything he did protected either the members of our guild or was in the interest of the village. So I saw no reason to stop supporting his actions.

When we got our guardian power, I insisted on me sending in the order, there were two reasons for this:
1) It would look stupid if we followed Gnasty blindly and would cast suspicion on me.
2) I did never really trust Gnasty and figured this was the time to gain some power over the rest.

Then Gnasty died and the rest of the guild kinda agreed that I would function as "guildleader" huzzah.

Throughout the game I was in contact with James (people even accused us of being stonecutters at one point. ) and I told him that Gnasty was doing what was best for the village and guild at that point. His guild went ahead and got Gnasty killed anyway, so I was surprised about that.

So I jokingly voted on him, assuming that something better would come up later that day. Surprisingly some sheep decided it would be fun to hop on this bandwagon. I warned James through IM that he was getting bandwagoned before I went to bed. During that night James was successful in turning the bandwagon on me.

Dead, I was and James kept on rocking in a free world.

*fakeedit: I never know if people read these posts of mine, they must be very uninteresting. xD

Haha, dude, I think I was the sheep that voted for him, and then helped move the vote to you *awkward*

I like the post postmortem explanations Tux. It was kinda weird not only this being my first Phalla but starting late too. Its crazy how close we were to not losing though.

I felt like the guilds didn't quite work though. It would have been better I think if they had either been larger and/or had some power to use through out the game or some ability to decide whom among them was evil. Then I feel like the private guild discussions would have focused on that stuff and less on pre-picking who to bandwagon in the main thread like seemed to happen a couple of times.

That said it was a lot of fun and the narrations were really good...I especially liked when you started to incorporate the deaths more.